Patch 5.05 Astrologian is still frustrating, stressful, and disappointing

Introduction / context

I usually refrain from complaining on the forums if a job is simply "difficult", because I believe that difficulty can be reduced over time with practice and developing instincts/muscle memory. As long as the job is fun to play and produces rewarding results, difficulty can be "ok" (stressful, but overall, okay).

So, if I'm writing a post on the official forums about how negative my experiences with a job have been in the current patch, please understand that those experiences have been very negative. Also, please understand that, overall, I enjoy FFXIV and its job and combat design very much (which is why I feel passionate enough about the gameplay to want to spend time making a post like this in the first place).

What I enjoy about 5.05 Astrologian

• Earthly Star is still a very satisfying ability. Watching it detonate is both beautiful and rewarding, and learning when to place it in during an encounter for maximum results is fun. This is one of the abilites that makes playing non-AST healers boring/less fun for me.
• Cards/Divination are, conceptually, fun and appealing. I like buffing my party members. I think doing this is much more fun than just spamming Glare and drooling, or tossing one debuff on the target every 120s and otherwise not interacting with my party members. Watching their buffs or the encounter and timing the release of synergistic effects is rewarding and satisfying.
• The sparkle princess stars and planets aesthetic is unique and appealing. It feels very drab and boring to switch from AST to WHM (non-descript white lights, and then more non-descript white lights) or SCH (which barely even has an aesthetic or a concept other than "I'm wearing a mortarboard").
• The new OGCD heals added in Shadowbringers are a satisfying and appealing addition to AST's toolkit. Horoscope, Celestial Intersection, new Celestial Opposition, two charges on Essential Dignity, and Neutral Sect have all helped make AST feel more rounded and comfortable to play as a healer.
• Malefic's 1.5s cast time allows me to zoom and scoot around the battlefield and freely weave OGCDs after nearly every spell. Switching to other healers from AST feels much more sluggish and annoying, with constantly pushing slidecast risks after long 2.5s spells and struggling to cram double-weaves into what non-clipping windows I can find.
• The ability to flip between Diurnal and Nocturnal is conceptually-appealing, and it's fun in dungeons to switch back and forth between pulls to give the tank maximum defensive coverage before combat.

What I dislike about 5.05 Astrologian: Cards

• The new Card system is too over-designed and over-complicated. It's distracting, overwhelming, irritating, and not very fun to try to manage and juggle all of these decisions during an active encounter.
• First, I'm not allowed to gain Seals outside combat. This is very frustrating. Sometimes I play a card just a split-second too soon, even though I've already attacked a target, and I get no seal and I'm now behind on prepping Divination.
• I can't prep Divination before combat, meaning that during the opening of encounters (when I'm trying to do maximum DPS and not clip or slow down) or during huge trash pulls in dungeons (when I need to also be weaving tons of defensive abilities on the tank), I'm burdened by having to do a truly boggling amount of Draw / Sleeve Draw / Redraw / Play / Redraw / Redraw / Play ... in rapid succession, trying to get 3 different Seals for a proper Divination, which also must go out within the first 10 or so seconds in order to not miss everyone's important buff windows. This is extremely stressful, and also hurts my fingers.
• It's also kind of awkward that Divination has been reduced to 120s CD, but Sleeve Draw is still 180s CD. Sleeve Draw feels designed to set up Divination: it lets me get a lot of cards out on a lot of players in quick succession, as well as getting a lot of different Seals (hopefully) generated and cycled through. Divination without Sleeve Draw first requires me to be extremely picky and cautious (and sometimes outright sub-optimal) about how I play my Draws every 30s, to make sure I set up the next Divination correctly and especially to make sure I don't get slightly distracted and accidentally play a card without Minor Arcana first when I have 3 seals lined up (it's a terrible feeling to think I'm playing a well-matched card, only to suddenly have my heart sink as I realize I just turned Moon-Planet-Sun into Planet-Sun-Planet), because I then don't have Sleeve Draw to make a last-ditch attempt to patch up the Seal array. And then, Sleeve Draw without Divination is like "Oh okay, I guess here's a lot of random cards on random people at a random time, enjoy I guess". (To be fair, a lot of CDs come up at 180s, such as Brotherhood and Inner Release, etc... but as I've detailed elsewhere, actually getting Draws to work out correctly on-time is a headache that often doesn't go well).
• Cards are awkward and annoying to use, because FFXIV still has a terrible targeting system for friendly players. Having to click a party member, detarget the enemy, activate an effect, then retarget the enemy all within approximately 1-2 seconds, multiple times in a row (Sleeve Draw) or every 30s (Draw), is neither comfortable nor fun. Add in having to attempt to Draw, process what I've just Drawn, and then Redraw or Play all inside one GCD as a double-weave while Lightspeed is up and all while not clipping my next cast, and I absolutely dread seeing Sleeve Draw is coming off cooldown — utilizing the ability is stressful and irritating.
• I can't even just Draw a card and play it. Because I might get a Melee card when I need Ranged, or vice-versa. So then I have to Redraw. But maybe that Melee card had the correct Seal, and I redraw into a Ranged card with a duplicate seal. Now I'm behind on setting up Divination and I have to add yet another OGCD weave to convert the duplicate seal into a Crowns card so it doesn't mess up my Divination prep. The amount of times that I often need to weave Draw, Redraw, and Minor Arcana over and over in a short span of time just to get a card I can actually play is very frustrating.
• And for all of this, the cards last only 15s and have a disappointingly small effect. This means that I need to do my best to land the card inside someone's burst or buff windows. But that's difficult to do with the short duration, and being constantly pressured to Draw again (every 30s) or spit out cards rapid-fire (Sleeve Draw). I sometimes find myself growing so tired of this over-complicated busy-work that I just start flinging cards on anyone with a warm body just to get it over with and concentrate on the encounter. And it barely feels like it matters.
• And all of this might not even be a problem if FFXIV had old-school MMO "true support" classes where my sole job was to add some DPS while managing and distributing cards. But instead, while I'm managing these constant multi-stage weaving and buff management plans every 1.5s, I'm also supposed to be keeping the party alive, placing or activating appropriate healing OGCDs (which further displace weave slots for this card mess) and generally doing everything that a White Mage needs to do, except the WHM gets to spam Glare and sometimes tap Afflatus Misery, all while adding more total DPS and equivalent or better healing to the party than anything I do with my cards or healing OGCDs. Why should I bother playing this Job in patch 5.05?

What I dislike about 5.05 Astrologian: Healing

• Horoscope not auto-detonating when it expires is very punishing to a job that is already over-loaded on OGCDs it's trying to weave. To make use of Horoscope, I have to spend 1 OGCD (activate it), then spend 1 GCD (upgrade to Horoscope Helios), then another OGCD (trigger the heal). And this is while I'm probably busy trying to get out Essential Dignities, Celestial Intersections, Earthly Stars, and, of course, Draw Redraw Play Sleeve Draw Redraw Play Minor Arcana Play Redraw Redraw Minor Arcana Play Divination Draw Redraw Play. I honestly like that Horoscope is a healing ability that "rewards" a healer for using a GCD heal with a nice OGCD burst heal sometime later, but the buff is too short (I honestly don't always need a 400 potency OGCD AOE within 30s of casting an Aspected Helios), and the finger/clipping clutter required to use Horoscope causes me to sometimes either let the buff expire, or leave the ability on cooldown, because it's just not going to fit into everything else I need to do.
• Even as a healer, AST feels mediocre and underwhelming. WHM and SCH feel much more balanced, and much more powerful. In a dungeon, I can go so much longer, and handle so much more incoming damage, as WHM or SCH before having to resort to direct GCD casts, compared to AST, which quickly exhausts its tools and falls behind and has to resort to Benefic 2 spam. WHM is still drowning in healing output and MP recovery tools; SCH's Fairy actually seems more powerful than ever, as well as SCH's ability to leverage OGCD / "No-GCD" (Embrace/Veil) healing feeling more powerful than ever.
• Neutral Sect is a disappointing level 80 ability. Yes, it's very powerful, but it's also a last resort: it's a button I don't want to press, because it only affects GCD healing, meaning that I will do everything in my power to exhaust all of my other tools before finally resorting to Neutral Sect. And when I finally do, I'll cast maybe 1-2 Aspected Benefics or an Aspected Helios, and then do very little else with the buff. This would be a much more exciting ability if it boosted and "dual-bonus" all healing actions. Compare this to Temperance (even if I cast zero GCD heals, I still get party-wide damage reduction for a single OGCD weave) and Seraph (it costs me almost-literally nothing to get two free "super-Succors" and a little turret machine-gunning baby Adloquiums on the tank).
• Nocturnal Sect is still a limp, flaccid, disappointing stance. It's just so much weaker than a "real SCH", my heart sinks any time I see I'm partnered with a WHM. It's not fun to heal in Nocturnal: I want to avoid using my shields as much as possible, because they're expensive and inefficient. Which is also an issue for SCH, except SCH has a Fairy, Aetherflow, and tons of other tools to make it feel well-rounded and strong even when it's not shielding. Nocturnal AST is a hollow shell of a job with barely any identity or purpose; my sole reason to even exist is because this-or-that mechanic every 60 or 180s needs a little extra EHP on the party to squeeze through it. The rest of the time, avoiding using my shields means I feel like I'm barely doing anything as Nocturnal AST, because I have so many fewer relevant tools by comparison to everything SCH can do even when an encounter requires zero shields. Diurnal AST, on the other hand, at least feels like a mostly-legitimate "alternative WHM" in terms of its toolset and abilities.
• MP vaporizes way too quickly. I know this has always been a weakness of AST, but I think it's a poor kind of weakness ("This healer has a much higher chance of running out of fuel if they make mistakes, and dooming you all / shutting off Raises"). All it does is help make AST feel like even more of a liability compared to WHM and SCH.
• Competing with WHM or SCH for a healing slot, I feel self-conscious and guilty. I do starkly underwhelming personal DPS, and I don't even effectively compensate for that with my Cards, even if they're played perfectly. And as I noted above, playing Cards / Divination perfectly while not clipping and not missing important healing actions and not messing up encounter mechanics is a stressful, overwhelming chore and it relies on my party members being skilled enough with their own jobs/play to make full use of the buffs. And for all that — it doesn't even have a payoff that makes it worthwhile! AST is literally making my, and my party's, life more difficult... for no reason. Just take a WHM: you get better results with much less stress and distraction, and largely independent of anyone else's job performance. This is honestly kind of depressing, but sparkly stars and a fun design aren't good enough to justify continuing to do this.

What could make 5.05 Astrologian better?

• Card management should be simplified. It's not the basic concept (matching shapes and colors, getting all 3), it's the fact I need to do this using animation-locked OGCDs in-between doing everything else I'm trying to do, and I need to do it a lot (way too much). The number of OGCD weaves that I need to spend managing, adjusting, and correcting cards, and the awkwardness/punishment of trying to set up Divination, should be heavily streamlined so AST is less about constantly switching targets and breaking my fingers trying to weave up the correct card.
• Give Horoscope a longer buff after being activated (honestly, 45-60s wouldn't be unreasonable given the requirements to set it up properly), and let Horoscope auto-detonate like Excogitation and Earthly Star (AST has way too many OGCDs to manage already).
• Nocturnal Sect still needs help. It should just be a duplicate SCH. I'm not even joking any more, I'm tired and I think this is the easiest solution. Give me a little moon that follows me around casting "Nocturnal Embrace", and give my OGCDs extra charges while in Nocturnal to mimick Aetherflow. It's still not going to be 1:1 with SCH, but it also shouldn't be (SCH still deserves its own job identity, after all), and at least Nocturnal AST would start to feel like a legitimate alternative to Diurnal, and AST/WHM might stop feeling like a parody of a real comp.
• Either strongly-increase AST's support buffs, or increase AST's personal DPS, or both. There needs to be some kind of incentive to actually justify the amount of effort and attention that AST's support toolset demands right now. (This is definitely somewhat contingent on how much AST's personal DPS is increased, as well as how much Cards are streamlined).
• Some MP management boosts would also help. WHM feels like it almost has infinite MP and can do whatever it wants; SCH isn't far behind (especially with Energy Drain back). Subbing in an AST, by contrast, makes everything feel a lot more delicate. I understand that WHM does need to retain some advantages of its own, but right now AST just feels strictly worse in basically every way, and MP management is one of the stand-out points.

Conclusion

I expect that some of my points might be over-exaggerated or refuted by more skilled players operating at a higher level of play, and I respect that. But, I am a "reasonable" player: I research my Jobs extensively before playing them, spend a lot of time setting up my HUD and keybinds, practice a lot and run content repeatedly to learn it and how to manage my tools. So, at least understand that if I'm feeling this frustrated and underpowered as AST, it's probably even worse for many players (who approach the game in a more relaxed manner, or put less effort into research, learning, and practice) and still a problem for more skilled players (even though they are talented or experienced enough to compensate or manage better than I can).

• Earthly Star *is* a nice ability in concept, but its heal potency needs to be increased.
• Celestial Opposition (note the last word) needs its stun component restored. The ability was designed as an AE stun. If another heal class (WHM) is keeping its AE stun (a better version) there is no reason AST can't have its stun back.
• Collective Unconscious is far too weak in heal potency compared to the healing fields of other healer jobs. The restriction of not being able to move or cast ANYTHING in order to maintain the field needs to be lifted so that we can lay down the field and then move around/cast; if we are to be completely helpless to do anything else in order to maintain, this should be absolutely the most potent of all healing fields.

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Originally Posted by Side-Eye

• Collective Unconscious is far too weak in heal potency compared to the healing fields of other healer jobs. The restriction of not being able to move or cast ANYTHING in order to maintain the field needs to be lifted so that we can lay down the field and then move around/cast; if we are to be completely helpless to do anything else in order to maintain, this should be absolutely the most potent of all healing fields.

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It's not obvious but the damage reduction lasts for 5 seconds after you stop casting it, so as long as you just tap it right before The Big Hit™ goes out, you're fine. The regen of course lasts the normal duration regardless.

But yes, otherwise generally speaking it's a flatly worse ability than similar that the other healers get.

Give me back my old cards and then i'll be fine. I too enjoy buffing my party. But I don't enjoy being a balance bot. AST was soooo much more fun and interesting before ShB.

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Originally Posted by Seoulstar

Give me back my old cards and then i'll be fine. I too enjoy buffing my party. But I don't enjoy being a balance bot. AST was soooo much more fun and interesting before ShB.

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Not to mention that we did not need to juggle the card system so hard and aside from people fixating on Balance there was only one card in real need of a rework to not be as useless as it was.

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Originally Posted by Donnicton

It's not obvious but the damage reduction lasts for 5 seconds after you stop casting it, so as long as you just tap it right before The Big Hit™ goes out, you're fine. The regen of course lasts the normal duration regardless.

But yes, otherwise generally speaking it's a flatly worse ability than similar that the other healers get.

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Right, I was mainly pointing out that unlike other healers, we can't cast ours and then continue with other dps/heals .. in order to maintain the full effect we literally have to stand there motionless. That's impractical. Would be much better if we could set the field and then proceed with other actions. If we're to remain motionless for its full effect, its full effect should be -- astronomical in potency.

Would also add:

• Nocturnal sect's asinine 1k Aspected Benefic cost even under Neutral Sect where Diurnal can get the exact same effect for 500 less mp.
• Nocturnal is only useful when partnered with a whm if Duirnal's shields are not good enough which unfortunately it is for dungeons/extreme trials/eden normal/E1S
• We are still 'fishing' (i would argue more now) for specific cards just it is random on the cards we want rather than being set now

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Originally Posted by Side-Eye

• Earthly Star *is* a nice ability in concept, but its heal potency needs to be increased.

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It is the strongest AoE heal in this game with a potency of 720. The Star doesn't need buffing, people just need to stop being monkeys and actually step inside. :rolleyes:




Apart from that I agree that Ast feels too busy and hectic for too little reward compared to Whm.
For most of SB I enjoyed Ast over Whm bc of the complexity the job has AND the fact it was also rewarding putting the extra effort of more buttons to manage and press, but with how strong Whm has become it is simply not worth it anymore.
I guess I like playing Whm as well, but it feels less smooth compared to former Ast bc of obv clipping issues.

RE: Divination prep -
I believe this was intentional to prevent the "pre-loading" of cards prior to starting a fight. Sure, maybe you got lucky with a Balance + Ewer/Spire and were good to go within 60s, or maybe you sat there cursing RNG for 5 minutes as the game refused to give you anything but Boles. But either way, you would wait, because having that expanded Balance in your pocket at the beginning was just too good. They did the same thing with SCH aetherflow by making it useless out of combat (see also: WAR Infuriate). SE doesn't want us "prepping" like that anymore, and I can see where they're coming from. It sucked knowing that with a SCH in the group you had a full minute wait time before you could restart a fight, and likewise with AST you could sit there for several minutes before you would actual start a fight, only to do it again later if there was a wipe. But even doing it just once was still boring and unfun, on top of giving AST a major advantage over the other healers.
Now, everyone's on the same equal footing when they start. Everyone needs to wait for combat to start before generating their respective resources.

CO needs its stun back. I'd also like to see the "+duration to buffs" effect brought back as well. That was unique, and would work well with Divination (since 15s seems a bit low). Maybe only 10s this time around instead of 15, but still, something to give AST a bit more of a boost in the buffing department. 25s of Divination would be a solid boost to AST without making them OP. If worse comes to worst, then make it only a 5s extension for 20s total, putting it on par with Battle Voice and Technical Finish.

Cards - I like this new system. Everything is useful now and it's no longer a terrible thing to MA a Balance or Spear. I use MA a helluva lot more now than I did in SB, where I would hopefully Sleeve Draw a Lady and just hold it as an extra oGCD heal. It doesn't feel particularly cumbersome to me now that Draw and Play are separate skills; it doesn't feel difficult to cycle through Redraw every GCD looking for a card I want, and if nothing I need comes up then I can still MA it and get plenty of value. I haven't yet run into a situation where I was without a seal prior to Div coming off CD. Perhaps something can be added that would force the next card drawn to be a given seal as a hedge against RNG, but I have no idea how they would do that without adding a lot of button bloat.

Healing - a bit more QoL stuff, like with HH needing to be triggered instead of just popping automatically when it runs out like Excog, would go a long way. Drop the AB cost on Noct Sect down to 750, or maybe make it 500 with a small cooldown to avoid spamming. Add a bit of something to Synastry to make it stand out more; not that it's a bad skill as is, it's just a good spot to throw some AST-unique improvements onto that won't disrupt the rest of the kit. Maybe make it so any GCD ability used does a minor heal (100-150 pot) on the Synastry target, giving AST's some side-healing they can do on someone while also dpsing.

I have to say you all are making me dread leveling my ast at this point.

I played AST from 70 to 80 before the 5.05 buffs.
It was fine. People are overreacting.

Outside of the initial opener and Sleeve Draw windows I don't really understand the issue with cards being busywork. You have a 30 second window with each card, and single weaving space on every Malefic in which to utilize said window.

I will admit that the opener is hectic, and I understand the target swapping. being worse on controller, but once you get past that you have ample space to play the cards.

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Originally Posted by Naychan

I have to say you all are making me dread leveling my ast at this point.

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It's not anywhere near as terrible as people here are making it out to be. The only truly hectic part of it is the opener, and even then you can just ignore the seals and focus on getting divination out on time. Its only a 1-2% damage loss if you cant get all three seals and your future divinations will be easier to setup.

SE would be blind if they cannot see the AST problem right now. And if they really gonna wait until 6.0 to fix it, I probably won't keep subscription while waiting for that.

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Originally Posted by Seraphor

I played AST from 70 to 80 before the 5.05 buffs.
It was fine. People are overreacting.

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Try not to pass off a personal opinion as a fact~

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Originally Posted by Quor

RE: Divination prep -
I believe this was intentional to prevent the "pre-loading" of cards prior to starting a fight. Sure, maybe you got lucky with a Balance + Ewer/Spire and were good to go within 60s, or maybe you sat there cursing RNG for 5 minutes as the game refused to give you anything but Boles. But either way, you would wait, because having that expanded Balance in your pocket at the beginning was just too good. They did the same thing with SCH aetherflow by making it useless out of combat (see also: WAR Infuriate). SE doesn't want us "prepping" like that anymore, and I can see where they're coming from. It sucked knowing that with a SCH in the group you had a full minute wait time before you could restart a fight, and likewise with AST you could sit there for several minutes before you would actual start a fight, only to do it again later if there was a wipe. But even doing it just once was still boring and unfun, on top of giving AST a major advantage over the other healers.
Now, everyone's on the same equal footing when they start. Everyone needs to wait for combat to start before generating their respective resources.

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Except they could have solved this in other ways without making all our resources feel buggy to use. For example: make aetherflow/seals/other prep skills unavailable inside the circle you spawn into the duty in, and make the boss automatically aggro (if not pulled first) 30 seconds after the first person steps out of the circle. Now you have all your abilities, you won't unexpectedly not get a seal because the game hasn't realised you're in combat yet, and you won't be frantically mashing the aetherflow button as the last mob in a pull dies a second before aetherflow comes off cooldown, and no one has to wait more than 30 seconds for setup abilities.

Bare in mind you have to think and apply all of this while dealing with an over ambitious tank or a tank/DPS that likes to stand in things and thus you can forget about fiddling with your cards as it's Aspected Benefic+Benefic II spam for you along with Earthly Star and prayers that your tank doesn't fall and your DPS is using their aoes. It's funny how they put a lot more emphasis on the card system but most of the time it's far too dangerous to sometimes risk it otherwise you're doing finger gymnastics. Now it's not all doom and gloom of course; I've been in numerous amounts of good parties that really know their roles and AST has plenty of time to play cards and DPS. I only wish they made the cards count outside of battle; I've lost count how many seals I thought I had but recently found out that that person has to be engaged in battle for it to count. That change is a total bummer.

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Originally Posted by Brandedblade

I will admit that the opener is hectic, and I understand the target swapping. being worse on controller, but once you get past that you have ample space to play the cards.

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I agree that during fights the 30s windows to manage cards are fine, but still not worth the 'extra' effort you have to put sadly. It's less about being 'too' busy, but more about the gain you get from all this extra work you put into and for savage content it is barely worth it atm.
If you have a team playing on a very high level gameplay wise, yes, Ast is actually worth in a speedkill setting (even tho fastest clears are still done with Sch+Whm on all floors afaik), but as soon as you step into your regular PF all the buffs you can throw out will not grant you any gain over Whm, therefore there is little reason to put the extra stress on you when you can just slack off and be a glare-mage.

I guess all of this applies in a more competetive setting and most players might not care much about it, tho.

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Originally Posted by Violet_Galaxy

Bare in mind you have to think and apply all of this while dealing with an over ambitious tank or a tank/DPS that likes to stand in things and thus you can forget about fiddling with your cards as it's Aspected Benefic+Benefic II spam for you along with Earthly Star and prayers that your tank doesn't fall and your DPS is using their aoes. It's funny how they put a lot more emphasis on the card system but most of the time it's far too dangerous to sometimes risk it otherwise you're doing finger gymnastics. Now it's not all doom and gloom of course; I've been in numerous amounts of good parties that really know their roles and AST has plenty of time to play cards and DPS. I only wish they made the cards count outside of battle; I've lost count how many seals I thought I had but recently found out that that person has to be engaged in battle for it to count. That change is a total bummer.

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Aspected Benefic is an instant cast, theres weaving space for your cards, Lightspeed is a thing, that makes the benefic II spam give you weave space. AST has the tools for allowing you to heal that bad tank and play YuGiOh. And so what? Bad tanks are bad and no amount of healing on your part will fix that.

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Originally Posted by AmeliaVerves

I agree that during fights the 30s windows to manage cards are fine, but still not worth the 'extra' effort you have to put sadly. It's less about being 'too' busy, but more about the gain you get from all this extra work you put into and for savage content it is barely worth it atm.
If you have a team playing on a very high level gameplay wise, yes, Ast is actually worth in a speedkill setting (even tho fastest clears are still done with Sch+Whm on all floors afaik), but as soon as you step into your regular PF all the buffs you can throw out will not grant you any gain over Whm, therefore there is little reason to put the extra stress on you when you can just slack off and be a glare-mage.

I guess all of this applies in a more competetive setting and most players might not care much about it, tho.

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The cards could literally just be "throw confetti into the air" and I'd still prefer it over whm, it's more engaging to have something outside of heals and dps to manage, regardless of how much it contributes. Some people prefer not being a glare mage, irregardless of actual contribution.

Not to mention, the cards arent the only thing ast brings now. It brings its ogcd heals as well, while the AST themself have the awesome ability to use ogcds without loosing damage potency thanks to Malefic's cast time. While yeah their personal dps isnt the highest, they are def capable enough to minimize their cohealer gcd healing without loosing to much of their own.

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Originally Posted by Seoulstar

Try not to pass off a personal opinion as a fact~

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So should it be your opinion they listen to instead of mine?

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Originally Posted by Seoulstar

AST was soooo much more fun and interesting before ShB.

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Careful, make sure you preface this by saying it's just your opinion.

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Originally Posted by Quor

RE: Divination prep -
I believe this was intentional to prevent the "pre-loading" of cards prior to starting a fight. Sure, maybe you got lucky with a Balance + Ewer/Spire and were good to go within 60s, or maybe you sat there cursing RNG for 5 minutes as the game refused to give you anything but Boles. But either way, you would wait, because having that expanded Balance in your pocket at the beginning was just too good. They did the same thing with SCH aetherflow by making it useless out of combat (see also: WAR Infuriate). SE doesn't want us "prepping" like that anymore, and I can see where they're coming from. It sucked knowing that with a SCH in the group you had a full minute wait time before you could restart a fight, and likewise with AST you could sit there for several minutes before you would actual start a fight, only to do it again later if there was a wipe. But even doing it just once was still boring and unfun, on top of giving AST a major advantage over the other healers.
Now, everyone's on the same equal footing when they start. Everyone needs to wait for combat to start before generating their respective resources.

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My problem with the decision is that it seems to have been made exclusively with raids in mind, without considering other content. Outside of savage raids, I'm not sure anyone even knows what an "opener" is, let alone makes the group wait while they prepare the perfect one. Meanwhile it's annoying in dungeons, to have to deliberately do something to "get yourself in combat", on every single trash pack, before you can start doing your job.

On the other hand, I'm definitely not saying the problem should have been ignored just because most people weren't running into it---it certainly sounds really irritating to me. I'd have just preferred an alternative solution, like "all secondary resources set to zero when pulling a raid boss" or something.

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Originally Posted by Seraphor

I played AST from 70 to 80 before the 5.05 buffs.
It was fine. People are overreacting.

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The OP has a few hyperboles in it but the complaint is reasonably well put
-The card system is too much work for not enough gain, say what you will about the old system at least it felt impactful
-There are too many ogcds to juggle to be as effective as you can be, this is tied into the card system, the numerous timers going on and Earthly star being the only one with a failsafe if you lose track while healing
-Neutral feels underwhelming, this is due to ast having lost it's increased healing on sects so our heals naturally became weaker (same with sch/whm losing Largesse but ast lost that too so we lost 2x the amount of potency increasing)
-Nocturnal being Nocturnal, this has always been an issue since inception, Diurnal has always been better, ShB just put more shade on it
-CU is weak and pathetic and needs a buff something most ast believe it should

Now i do not agree with OP on everything but they put forward a good argument why they are not liking ast atm, the stuff i added in my post are direct problems i have ast.

But i am going to contest you on ast was fine pre 5.05, it was not it was very close to launch 3.0 ast in terms of how undertuned it was the 5.05 buffs made it go from barely ok to 'its fine' status like the other healers, which ofc have their own issues as well. Nothing here has been an overreaction apart from the finger gymnastics but to get the best opener you kinda do need to do that but it quietens down after that as does most dps jobs (opener is always busiest part then when buffs realign so for Ast 6 mins in), i mean we could always open another thread whenever ast gets a buff whm would be made completely redundant again :P

Now take this with a grain of salt but if the devs followed your line of reasoning with, Ast was fine pre 5.05, how bad do you think it would be in savage? bare in mind after the buffs Ast is still behind Whm and Sch in usuability(3-4 weeks in), providing rDPS(not personal its utility is still behind whm's pure dps and sch's mix), it can heal good(when it used to be the worse at it).

It paints you as someone who is blindly going along with whatever despite glaring issues and trying to downplay people's concerns with a job that needs to be looked at more (Whm and Sch for that matter too).

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Originally Posted by Crushnight

Neutral feels underwhelming, this is due to ast having lost it's increased healing on sects so our heals naturally became weaker (same with sch/whm losing Largesse but ast lost that too so we lost 2x the amount of potency increasing)

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Quick note, but I recall them buffing most of AST's base potencies to make up for the sect healing loss when ShB rolled out. I also have to disagree with everyone here saying Neutral Sect is underwhelming; it's by far the best of the 80 healer abilities IMO. Stacks with SCH's shields, provides a beefy regen, and can be reapplied. Aspected Benefic becomes hilariously strong because of it, and Aspected Heilos can shield from a respectable amount of damage and top everyone off at the same time. Other healers have to use 2 abilities to get those results from 1 cast, or more. I would take it over Temperance any day, considering how many times someone would need to take damage that's reduced by 10% to equal the amount that Neutral Sect would outright absorb, or Consolation from Seraph even.

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Originally Posted by Wawachume

My problem with the decision is that it seems to have been made exclusively with raids in mind, without considering other content. Outside of savage raids, I'm not sure anyone even knows what an "opener" is, let alone makes the group wait while they prepare the perfect one. Meanwhile it's annoying in dungeons, to have to deliberately do something to "get yourself in combat", on every single trash pack, before you can start doing your job.

On the other hand, I'm definitely not saying the problem should have been ignored just because most people weren't running into it---it certainly sounds really irritating to me. I'd have just preferred an alternative solution, like "all secondary resources set to zero when pulling a raid boss" or something.

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On the one hand, I sympathize with you, but on the other, I don't. I don't say this to be cheeky, it's just that over the long view, all SE did was take SMN/SCH/AST and bring them in line with every other job. No one else can generate non-MP resources outside of combat, and now SMN/SCH/AST are on equal footing with everyone else. Because let's be honest here; being able to prep cards (and aetherflow stacks) was an outright advantage.
As for your suggestion, I get where you're coming from, but practically it's just going to create a lot of confusion. While it'd be nice not to worry about it in a non-8-man environment, truth be told no one is losing sleep over non-optimal 4-mans. If anything, disabling the "Play" button until the AST is in combat will solve the issue just as well; can't waste a card if you can't use it.

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Originally Posted by Brandedblade

The cards could literally just be "throw confetti into the air" and I'd still prefer it over whm, it's more engaging to have something outside of heals and dps to manage, regardless of how much it contributes. Some people prefer not being a glare mage, irregardless of actual contribution.

Not to mention, the cards arent the only thing ast brings now. It brings its ogcd heals as well, while the AST themself have the awesome ability to use ogcds without loosing damage potency thanks to Malefic's cast time. While yeah their personal dps isnt the highest, they are def capable enough to minimize their cohealer gcd healing without loosing to much of their own.

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That is fair and fine, but doesn't change the fact that Ast potencies are flat out inferior to Whm and there is, apart from having more fun to play the class, literally no reason to bring Ast instead of Whm.
As I said it doesn't matter much if you are just playing casually, but for more competetive gameplay this is an actual issue.

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Originally Posted by Arale

Neutral Sect

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I do agree that the idea of Neutral Sect is really good and an obv choice for Ast, but I really dislike the duration and CD.

You get: 20s of both sects on your aspected Skills every 2min, but Asts whole skillset prevents you from spamming GCD heals. So why the long duration?! + You obv don't want to spam asp. Helios bc you why would you want to overwrite the buffed HoT it applies instead of letting it work on its own?

The skill could be much better with a much shorter duration (say 10s, more than enough for both 1 asp. Helios and 2 asp. Benefic) and therefore a shorter CD. But I guess they can't do this because all healers need to have a strong 2min skill that lasts 20s. :rolleyes: It does work well for Sch and Whm, bc the Seraph is just a buffed version of your regular fairy and Temperance boosts your Lily heals which you mainly use for healing anyways, but the concept is just lackluster for Ast and all their oGCD tools.

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Originally Posted by Brandedblade

Aspected Benefic is an instant cast, theres weaving space for your cards, Lightspeed is a thing, that makes the benefic II spam give you weave space. AST has the tools for allowing you to heal that bad tank and play YuGiOh. And so what? Bad tanks are bad and no amount of healing on your part will fix that.

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And with Noct Stance, Aspected benefic becomes another Essential Dignity, albeit using GCD and its high MP cost. As far as I know, there's no one who could Insta Shield besides Noct AST. Also, Lightspeed is an underrated skill. It's literally an "Oh Shit" button for AST. You could spam Aspected Helios and Helios with 50% less MP, you could Benefic and Benefic II that bad tank and you can still weave Celestial Opposition and Earthly Star. You could also slip Aspected helios' regen if you're in Diurnal to quickly apply regen stacking for those so called bad tanks.

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Originally Posted by Brandedblade

The cards could literally just be "throw confetti into the air" and I'd still prefer it over whm, it's more engaging to have something outside of heals and dps to manage, regardless of how much it contributes. Some people prefer not being a glare mage, irregardless of actual contribution.

Not to mention, the cards arent the only thing ast brings now. It brings its ogcd heals as well, while the AST themself have the awesome ability to use ogcds without loosing damage potency thanks to Malefic's cast time. While yeah their personal dps isnt the highest, they are def capable enough to minimize their cohealer gcd healing without loosing to much of their own.

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I share the sentiment. Also, don't our cards' and Divination buff count as our dps as well? Those along with Malefic and Combust surely count for our personal dps, right?

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Originally Posted by Seraphor

Careful, make sure you preface this by saying it's just your opinion.

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Ha. Also, love your siggy. ;)

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Originally Posted by AmeliaVerves

That is fair and fine, but doesn't change the fact that Ast potencies are flat out inferior to Whm and there is, apart from having more fun to play the class, literally no reason to bring Ast instead of Whm.
As I said it doesn't matter much if you are just playing casually, but for more competetive gameplay this is an actual issue.






I do agree that the idea of Neutral Sect is really good and an obv choice for Ast, but I really dislike the duration and CD.

You get: 20s of both sects on your aspected Skills every 2min, but Asts whole skillset prevents you from spamming GCD heals. So why the long duration?! + You obv don't want to spam asp. Helios bc you why would you want to overwrite the buffed HoT it applies instead of letting it work on its own?

The skill could be much better with a much shorter duration (say 10s, more than enough for both 1 asp. Helios and 2 asp. Benefic) and therefore a shorter CD. But I guess they can't do this because all healers need to have a strong 2min skill that lasts 20s. :rolleyes: It does work well for Sch and Whm, bc the Seraph is just a buffed version of your regular fairy and Temperance boosts your Lily heals which you mainly use for healing anyways, but the concept is just lackluster for Ast and all their oGCD tools.

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But it's easy to weave it in between casts of dps, or cards, or other healing abilities. The duration may be a bit long, but I've reshielded my group at the end of it's cast so that they can absorb the next mechanic and regen a little after. Some AoE's come in waves as well. E1S has several instances where you get whacked with 2 heavy raid wide damage abilities. Hell, I often provide most of the healing for Paradise Regained because the duration of N.Sect is enough that you can shield the tank lasers, then the delta buddy stack, and one final cast for the altered delta mechanic itself. While I will concede that using it once and leaving it does feel kind of whatever, the instances where I do that don't seem to be very often. I'll either weave a NA.Nenefic on the tank and continue casting. Just my 2c honestly.

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Originally Posted by Arale

But it's easy to weave it in between casts of dps, or cards, or other healing abilities. The duration may be a bit long, but I've reshielded my group at the end of it's cast so that they can absorb the next mechanic and regen a little after. Some AoE's come in waves as well. E1S has several instances where you get whacked with 2 heavy raid wide damage abilities. Hell, I often provide most of the healing for Paradise Regained because the duration of N.Sect is enough that you can shield the tank lasers, then the delta buddy stack, and one final cast for the altered delta mechanic itself. While I will concede that using it once and leaving it does feel kind of whatever, the instances where I do that don't seem to be very often. I'll either weave a NA.Nenefic on the tank and continue casting. Just my 2c honestly.

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I guess the skill is fine for most occasions and players, but take whatever I say with a tiny grain of salt, because I see everything in the context of a very high level of optimisation.
While you ofc can use several GCDs during the Neutral Sect window, you obviously don't want that when trying to maximize your DPS output, so ye. Not a big fan personally. ^^'

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Originally Posted by Evanoel

I share the sentiment. Also, don't our cards' and Divination buff count as our dps as well? Those along with Malefic and Combust surely count for our personal dps, right?

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Ast is still inferior to Whm rDPS and pDPS wise. It will probably change later in the expansion when DPS do more damage so the % buffs of the cards give out exponantially more damage too, but only time will tell.

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Originally Posted by AmeliaVerves

I guess the skill is fine for most occasions and players, but take whatever I say with a tiny grain of salt, because I see everything in the context of a very high level of optimisation.
While you ofc can use several GCDs during the Neutral Sect window, you obviously don't want that when trying to maximize your DPS output, so ye. Not a big fan personally. ^^'



Ast is still inferior to Whm rDPS and pDPS wise. It will probably change later in the expansion when DPS do more damage so the % buffs of the cards give out exponantially more damage too, but only time will tell.

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Normally I'd agree, but AST is the master at weaving so I feel like I'd lose less DPS throwing in a few heals vs a WHM who has to stop casting Glare in order to use one of their GCD heals. This is coming from an omnihealer perspective, so it might just be nuance for me at that point.

Inferior now yes, sadly. But %'s are tricky, and people have done the math. Eventually we will gain from everyone getting better gear, etc. This also doesn't factor in any potency buffs from cards that may happen. Given all the complaining, concerns and even some vitriol around here, I would be super surprised if they didn't do something about Divination at the very least.

Hmm i don't know. I feel like the flow has improved quite a bit. It's still a bit clunky when some cooldowns come up but nowhere near as bad. I hope they will eventually get it right but some steps have been made in the right direction.

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Originally Posted by Crushnight

Would also add:

• Nocturnal sect's asinine 1k Aspected Benefic cost even under Neutral Sect where Diurnal can get the exact same effect for 500 less mp.
• Nocturnal is only useful when partnered with a whm if Duirnal's shields are not good enough which unfortunately it is for dungeons/extreme trials/eden normal/E1S
• We are still 'fishing' (i would argue more now) for specific cards just it is random on the cards we want rather than being set now

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Noct AB is a button you just let gather dust, because CI is such a good skill that's available when you need it.

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Originally Posted by Arale

Quick note, but I recall them buffing most of AST's base potencies to make up for the sect healing loss when ShB rolled out. I also have to disagree with everyone here saying Neutral Sect is underwhelming; it's by far the best of the 80 healer abilities IMO. Stacks with SCH's shields, provides a beefy regen, and can be reapplied. Aspected Benefic becomes hilariously strong because of it, and Aspected Heilos can shield from a respectable amount of damage and top everyone off at the same time. Other healers have to use 2 abilities to get those results from 1 cast, or more. I would take it over Temperance any day, considering how many times someone would need to take damage that's reduced by 10% to equal the amount that Neutral Sect would outright absorb, or Consolation from Seraph even.

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This is why i put this underneath those bullet points,

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Originally Posted by Crushnight

Now i do not agree with OP on everything but they put forward a good argument why they are not liking ast atm, the stuff i added in my post are direct problems i have ast.

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I have issues with Neutral but it is due to Nocturnal rather anything Neutral does

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Originally Posted by technole

Noct AB is a button you just let gather dust, because CI is such a good skill that's available when you need it.

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It certainly feels that way it is truly sad how they can never balance Nocturnal with Diurnal let alone with scholar

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Originally Posted by Crushnight

This is why i put this underneath those bullet points,



I have issues with Neutral but it is due to Nocturnal rather anything Neutral does



It certainly feels that way it is truly sad how they can never balance Nocturnal with Diurnal let alone with scholar

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Fair enough. I agree though, the dual sect nature is kneecaping the class right now. I kinda wish they did a Horoscope esque system, where you had strong delayed heals and could manipulate them from there.

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Originally Posted by Crushnight

It certainly feels that way it is truly sad how they can never balance Nocturnal with Diurnal let alone with scholar

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Actually, now that SCH fairy's healing from embrace is like almost nothing. They have hardly any excuse anymore not to adjust Noct Sect base on SCH's shielding capability.

Pre-shield as SCH often lessens the need for extra heal from both my co-healer and myself, but pre-shield with noct helios often still require me to throw extra stuff to top off the party after co-healer's. I mostly have easier time to keep party stable with diurnal & whm double regen.

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Originally Posted by Miziliti

Actually, now that SCH fairy's healing from embrace is like almost nothing. They have hardly any excuse anymore not to adjust Noct Sect base on SCH's shielding capability.

Pre-shield as SCH often lessens the need for extra heal from both my co-healer and myself, but pre-shield with noct helios often still require me to throw extra stuff to top off the party after co-healer's. I mostly have easier time to keep party stable with diurnal & whm double regen.

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Yep, so long as Duirnal's shields are all that is needed, Nocturnal is by in large worse, sorry to those that like this playstyle but it is worse than Diurnal in most situations.

plus- I really like the high speed healing returning again since that was like the first reason that made me decide to use AST as my primary healing class and then fell in love with the card system which had so much utility.

Minus- The new card system still feels like butt, and is really distracting with certain abilities that should have been moved to earlier levels like the current CO (30-50) and divination (lv1). And, they need to make like a "sectional/celestial transition (5 second cooldown)" ability or change the Blue AOE into an AOE shield instead of an aoe heal.

I'll say this, AST was not play tested for those who use controllers. Macros aren't a substitute for poor job design and giving a job this many targeted abilities on top of being a healer is pretty stupid and beyond clunky. I spend most of my lightspeed window making sure my cards actually go off

One of my main pet peeves is that in ideal groups - aka premades - there's not much issue about the melee/ranged split.... but in DF more often than not most, if not all, the party members are ranged*, and that already renders half the cards useless. Raise your hand if you'd ever had to burn all 3 charges of Redraw at once because the melee/ranged/seal don't match. Yeah...this totally fixed the "fishing" problem /s

*Like seriously, melees seem to be allergic to queuing for Alliance raids, I've had dozens of times where all 5 DPS are ranged.

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Originally Posted by Quor

*coughs in tank*
No no, it's fine, I'll just sit over here with my shadow. I'm happy this way, really, so you can stop looking at me with those eyes.

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I do throw the melee cards at the tank if there's no DPS, but we shouldn't be restricted by such an arbitrary, redundant, and clunky division to begin with. it's specially infuriating during Sleeve Draw.

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Originally Posted by Allegor

but in DF more often than not most, if not all, the party members are ranged*, and that already renders half the cards useless.

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*coughs in tank*
No no, it's fine, I'll just sit over here with my shadow. I'm happy this way, really, so you can stop looking at me with those eyes.

i know i'm probably a minority but i love his kit,other then the basic cards that are plain and divination which is decent, i really love his kit as a whole healing and the use of cards.
i ignore any potency issues or missing effect cause those can always be adjusted.
i love we can choose which sect we use before a fight to show some aspect of controlling fate,it makes the astrologist feel more versatile and in control.
however ,i think all can agree that the cards and divination needs a bit redesign.

that issue was a result of fishing cards and tbh if the fishing problem was that sever ,i would have thought that SE would probably force players to just use the card they drew and prevent him from using draw until otherwise because i mean the astrologist theme is reading cards and interpret them.

the cards rng doesn't feel an issue cause the rng is like fate you don't know what your going to get,but i would give a player a choice give a buff or target an enemy and apply a debuff according to the card(you know like up or down cards like in the tarrots) to make the card be more meaningful and to show a player skill by choosing that as well answering the problem had with a card being unused.in terms of redraw maybe limit it to one time per card drawn to prevent fishing.
the card system of play and draw is nice and i love it but i agree that each card need to be unique or 2 sets per seal should have their own buff to make them interesting.

in terms of divination and the seals i feel its cool but it doesn't solve fishing problems cause people will always aim for 3 different seals.i believe divination can be better maybe apply a buff based on which seal drawn and get increased based on same seal drawn.

but other then those 2 things draw,play.sleeve draw,minor arcana,lord of crowns and lady of crowns feels right,the healing kit and damage kit feel right with the astrologist and i don't really have much complains other then the basic cards and that divination is ok but can be better.